


Flesh and Bone

by Summertime_saddness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Harrington Family, Implied OCD, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, implied mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7991710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summertime_saddness/pseuds/Summertime_saddness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve isn’t afraid of the upside down, the great beyond, the Place Where People Disappear. But he is afraid of the way Jonathan Bryer smells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flesh and Bone

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for clarification on some of the tags! 
> 
> The whole camera destroying scene did not happen in this fic mainly because it just came out way to cruel.

There was nothing stranger than Jonathan Bryer. Nothing in all of Indiana, no one else, no where else, could someone or something like Jonathan possibly exist. 

*

Steve liked to pretend that he wasn’t really a bully because he never got his hands dirty; didn’t actually throw the first punch or stick his foot out to trip the quiet kid in the corner of class. But he laughed loudly when they fell, egged on his best friends to shove the dumb kid from History into his locker, crushed up their drawing when it fell out of their pocket. But no, he thought to himself, Steve Harrington was no bully. 

Steve was a liar. 

The Harringtons had a good home, even better hair, and money. Andrew Harrington’s job was of the sort that made you never quite sure what he actually did. All everyone in town knew was that he worked long hours, was almost always out of town and drove a car that did not belong in the Indiana Suburbs. Lilly Harrington was the sort who spent 10 minutes by every food item at the grocery store, examining each piece of fruit or loaf of bread for flaws; she always wore dark navy leather gloves and smelled like bleach. 

They lived in a three story home painted shades of sunny yellow and muted forest green. Stained glass on the windows of the ground floor peppered the sitting room floor with echoes of vibrant color, the faint outline of the glass’s detailed lilly portrait visible against the dark wood of the floor. 

When Steve was little he would sit in the patch of sun, spread out like a starfish floating above water, face bathed in the gentle light. He would force his eyes to stay open against the glare of the light, catching the hints of green and gold that swam across his exposed skin. His mother would find him there, basket of laundry on her hip, lips red and cracked open into a porcelain smile.

“Come on Stevie,” She would say in her sharp voice, her head tilting to the side, making her look even more doll like. “Your father will be home soon and he’ll be expecting a boy not a cat.”

Steve would get up quickly, straighten his wrinkled clothing. 

She’d leave after that, a swirl of taffeta skirts and perfumed air. She always smelled like Lilies. Steve knew the stained glass was her idea, an unneeded extravagance that Steve’s father had had installed in her honor soon after they were married, 

“Lilies for my Lily.” He would always say. 

When Steve is older he picks a handful of Aster flowers and Daisies from Mr. Camillo’s backyard and stuffs them in Jonathan Bryer’s tattered backpack when he isn’t looking. They are alone in the woods, and Jonathan is washing gritty dirt and mud from his hands in the nearby stream.The face that Jonathan makes when he goes to pull out of his camera strap from his pocket, only to be greeted with a cloud of pink and deep purple, makes every day of Steve’s cold life suddenly warmly worth it. He can’t say the words but he hopes that Jonathan knows what he means. 

 

Steve always categorized his mother in terms of her leaving, always in motion, flitting from one room to the next, always something in hand, always something to be righted. Dishes to be done, floorboards to be swept, silver to be polished, everything always had to be neat, neat, neat. 

The only time she would pause was to fix her curling blonde hair, reapply her lipstick, the darkest red she could find. She’d bend down to rearrange Steve’s collar, tuck in his shirt, scrub his grubby face with a cloth that always just a little too hot, leaving his cheeks a bright red. 

“Why can’t you stay clean, Stevie.” She’d snap, the nickname an attempt at affection, like Steve wasn’t just another mess for her to have to clean.

She’d twist the doorknob in sharp quick turns, 1, 2, 3, opening the backdoor leaning to their balcony, where’d she hang the family’s delicates up to dry.

“A dryer is far too harsh for that Stevie,” she’d call to him, “Make sure your wife knows that. And if she doesn’t, don’t marry her.”

 

Steve first see’s Jonathan in the middle school Gymnasium for a meeting about Respecting School Space. Jonathan’s clothes were wrinkled, backpack covered in streaks of ink from a spilled pen, jacket armored with hastily sewn on patches and loose bits of string. His face too always looked somehow gritty, like he had just stepped out off of a speeding bike, gravel and dirt a cloud around his face, leaving stained skin behind. 

Most importantly, to Steve at least, was that Jonathan was messy. 

Steve couldn’t keep his eyes off of him. 

 

*

At night, when Steve was supposed to be sleeping, tucked into his straight, ironed sheets, in pajamas that were too stiff to be comfortable, he would listen to the low murmurs of his parents from down the hull, until the sound of their voices lulled him to sleep. 

One night, a little after his 12th Birthday, he woke up to the sound of his mother screaming. He lay in his bed, paralyzed, the covers pulled up tight under his chin.

“Debt, what debt? You promised we’d move, Andrew, that’d we go somewhere like to New York or Chicago, not stay in the Goddamned town for another, what did you say, eight years?” His mother’s voice was all sharp edges and he could hear the click click of her shoes against the floor of their bedroom.

“You’re going to wake up Steve,” His father said in his deep voice, the ends of every word so clipped that Steve would imagine that some invisible pair of sheers must always be there, floating right next to his father’s mouth.

“...and do you really want to explain to him why you’re yelling in the middle of fucking night about how miserable you are living in this house big enough for ten people?”

Steven shrank back farther at the swear word, pulling the covers over his head, ruining his mother’s careful crease. 

In the morning his mother was ready in the kitchen with french toast and orange juice, already pouring steaming coffee into a mug for Steve’s father. Steve sat at his place at the table, watching his mother’s careful hair and perfect lipstick, and practiced smile, but he couldn’t place a single thing wrong. Maybe the night had all been a dream. 

Steve knew his family had money. Steve also knew they didn’t have as much as they maybe should, from the sharp glances he caught his mother throwing his father at dinner or the crease that stood etched on his father’s brow, soon to be a permanent fixture. 

The summer before Steve started high school two of the cars they had in their drive away suddenly disappeared. Steve asked his mother where they’d gone but she just tightened her red mouth and scrubbed harder at the spotless floor in sharp circles of three. 

He never asked about it again.

 

*

He’s 13 and alone on the baseball field too long after school’s end to be doing anything but avoiding home. Steve sits carefully on the bleachers, making sure the crease of his jeans falls together just so, his mother’s voice a never ending mantra in his head: “neat, neat neat.”  
It was nearly dark, the leaves of the trees surrounding the field were alive with colors of vibrant gold and familiar brown; fall was always Steve’s favorite season. 

He felt the presence of him before he saw him, the feeling of being watched, a flash of something green and mustard yellow, Jonathan Bryer's ever present tattered backpack.

He wasn’t looking at Steve, though Steve could tell that he knew Steve was there, his entire attention was focused on the trees leaning over the baseball field, branches propelled forward like welcoming arms. He had that dingy camera held gingerly in his hands, an old, too large looking thing from another time. He brought it close to his face, using another hand to gently focus the lens, body posed in quiet concentration. Jonathan was, Steve realized, ignoring him. 

“Hey Bryer,” Steve began, breaking the strange silence that had taken over them.

Jonathan didn’t move, just kept quietly adjusting the camera’s clunky mechanisms, looking out among the trees. 

Steve stands up, brushing invisible grit off of the back of his pants. 

“I said, ‘Hey, Bryer,’” Steve said, louder this time, his voice wasn’t sharp like his mother’s and the ends weren’t clipped liked his father’s. It was as if all the endes of his words were rounded, carefully curving over each other, directing themselves to nowhere. 

Jonathan sighed, lowering his camera to turn his head in Steve’s direction, expression unreadable.

Steve shuffled his feet, feeling awkward. He shoved his hands in his pockets, stood up to his full height. But Jonathan just stared at him, like he was humoring Steve with his attention.

“I uh,” Steve began, “What are you doing?”

Jonathon's eyebrows rose in surprise, disappearing into his sandy hair.

“Taking pictures of the trees.” He answered carefully. 

Steve nodded, taking a half step forward and then thinking better of it, rocking back on his heels. 

“Why are you here so late? And,” Jonathan looked around the empty bleachers with a raised eyebrow. “...alone.” 

Steve rubbed the back of his neck, he felt suddenly tired. 

“I just uh, don’t feel like going home.” 

Jonathan's eyes widened before quickly masking his features and nodding slowly. 

“I’m going to take some pictures in the woods,” He said slowly, pointing to where the treeline began further in the field. “Um, you want to come?” 

Steve stared at him before nodding. 

“Yeah, sure,” He said, all fake nonchalance. “Why not.”

 

They meet up after school sometimes, a wordless agreement since that day when they were 13 in the baseball field. Jonathan with his ever present camera in hand, scruffy jacket hanging loosely over his lanky body. Steve would be in pants too pressed to be comfortable, loose flannel over a polo he’d never admit to having had his mother pick out for him. 

“It brings out your eyes,” She had said.

“You ready?” Jonathon would say, face as unreadable as ever. 

“Yeah,” Steve replied, trying his best to ignore the shaky feeling he felt around Jonathon, like he bones were trying to find a way to free themselves from his skin.

They’d go out into the woods near the outskirts of town, to hidden streams Jonathan had discovered, to parts of the wood where all the trees had leaves so dark brown they looked nearly purple. 

It’s strange but their friendship feels like the only real thing Steve has ever had. They speak to each other is low whispers, about the future, about their families, about their fathers who were impressions in their lives. They’d trade old baseball cards, and books with missing pages from their childhood, and stories that are more like secrets. They laugh loudly the deeper they get into the forest, their forest, and Steve likes how he can always make Jonathon laugh so hard he nearly chokes. 

Sometimes they stare at eachother, brown eyes meeting green, and Steve feels something ache behind his ribcage, like a fish hook caught in the meat of his heart and Jonathan with his hands on the line. They don’t talk about it.

He keeps it a secret of course. No way he’d tell anyone that he, Steve Harrington, was willingly hanging out with Jonathan Bryer. And liking it. And he sure as hell would never tell anyone about how carefully Jonathan handles his camera, each gentle touch like a caress, how Steve was fascinated by those fingers. He’d never tell about how Jonathan’s hair was curly only in the back, underneath his wave of straight sandy blond, or how Jonathan smiled like he knew the secrets of the universe and laughed with his whole body. 

 

“I have a date with Marcia Mathers on Saturday,” Steve said quickly. He was facing away from Jonathon, face turned towards the sun through the trees of the forest. He heard the gentle of click of the shutter of Jonathon’s camera, the sound of his camera strap sliding down the side of the jacket.

“Oh, yeah?” Jonathan said, voice steady. “An actual date or are you just going to screw her.” 

Steve laughed, turning to face Jonathan, hands in his pockets. 

“I don’t know, I don’t know what I want.”

Jonathan turned to face Steve fully, face open and serious. 

“You don’t?”

Steve looked away, suddenly overwhelmed by Jonathon’s careful, knowing expression, he turned his gaze up to the azure sky. He wants to kiss him.

“No,” He half whispered, “I, don’t.”

It’s a lie and they both know it.

 

*

It was after one of these outings that he came home to find his mother silent and unmoving on one of the too large, too soft fainting couches in the sitting room, a silent pool of blood spilling from her arm. Her blood was the same color, Steve noted, of her lipstick.

 

“Your Mother is going through a difficult time,” His father told him hours later as they sat in the car outside of the Hospital, two towns over. His father tapped his large fingers against the black leather steering wheel. He smelled like he always did, like cigars and old books and cheap perfume. ‘From the secretary,’ he’d always say. His black hair stood shiny and wavy, curling around his ears from where he forgot to smooth it down with hair gel.

“The Doctors say it’s pretty common for women now-a-days,” he continued, fingers still following some silent rhythm. “They have this new thing, electrosomething. They say it can really help her.”

Steve nodded from the passenger seat. He couldn’t get the image out of his mind: Her pale, beautiful arms, the cuts all done is lines of three. He wondered if it was an accident, if she’d nicked herself but couldn’t bare to just see one solitary cut, that she had to do two more to make it right. He’d seen her do it before, with other things. 

They take a her home a few days after that. A beautiful, silent figure. She doesn’t clean, but she doesn’t do anything else either.

 

*

“You’ll never believe who I saw in town today,” His father said one morning, deep voice rumbling from behind the newspaper that covered his face, fat fingers tapping out against the table.

Steve froze in his seat, the waffle in his mouth turning into concrete.

“Kyle Forester,” His father continued. “Told me he saw you with that Bryer boy outside the woods.” 

Steve didn’t move and his father didn’t lower the newspaper.

“I told him that there was no way my son would be hanging with that queer.” He lowered the newspaper, fixing Steve with one sharp grey eye. “Isn’t that right son?”

Steve nodded swallowing against the solid mass in his mouth. His nodded once, before moving the Newspaper back to it’s place. Steve meets the dead eyes of his mother from across the table, and he watches the lines around them tighten.

 

*

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.” 

Steve looks up quickly from where he’d chipping away at a log with the heel of his winter boot, letting the scraps of green brown bark fall is rough shavings to the ground. 

He’s blindsided, struck, and not because those words were said, but because they had come out of the Jonathon's mouth and not his own. He’d known it was only a matter of time, that their...whatever this was had an expiration date. It’d been nearly a year, and that already was too much time.

“I just think...we’re from two different worlds and we were kidding ourselves that we could make this...work.” Jonathan isn’t looking at him, his gaze focused on the on the stream rushing in front of them, defrosted in the April warmth. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve answered, head bobbing in an exaggerated nod. “You’re right this was dumb.” He laughs, something mean and hollow. “This is stupid.”

Jonathan finally turns to face him, face pale and faded in the quickly diminishing light. 

“It wasn’t-” Jonathan shakes his head rapidly, “It wasn’t stupid! What this was, it was...special.”

“I’m not a fucking queer, sorry.” Steve bites out,his father’s voice spills from this throat. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“Oh, please,” Jonathan scoffs loudly. “You think I don’t see the way you look at me?” He moves rapidly to stand in front of Steve, face inches from his own. “You think I can’t see how much you want it too?”

He’s panting, and this close Steve can smell the sweet, minty tang of his breath, can see how the mixture of golden brown and green of his eyes, just like the forest surrounding them. 

He wants to kiss him. 

Steve lunges forward, shoving Jonathon onto the dirt and leaves of the forest floor. Jonathan's unreadable face breaks open, and Steve gets one look at Jonathan's tormented face before he turns on his heel to leave. He thinks of his mother and her careful cuts in threes on her arm, he thinks he can finally understand her motivation. 

 

*

A year later when Steve sees Jonathon’s defeated form posting up the MISSING posters for Will in the hallway, he feels that familiar painful tug in his chest. They do their School Routine, pretending they don’t know each other, only now it’s the only routine they both know. Steve cracks a joke with Kathy, reminds himself that the Bryer boy isn’t his problem, let’s Nancy go to talk to Jonathan and he says nothing. Steve is still a liar.

*

Of course they’d fall for the same girl.

When Steve watches Jonathon put an arm around Nancy in their dimly lit bedroom, he can’t tell of whom he is more jealous of. Wonders if this is how Jonathan felt every time Steve mentioned a date with a girl.

When Jonathan confronts him in the alley with Nancey Wheeler, he knows just to say to make Jonathon tick, remembers every secret he had shared, every fear he had for his brother. The words slip out so easily. And when Jonathan shoves Steve to the ground, climbing on top of him, his punches relentless, Jonathan can’t help to think that it’s the closest they’d ever been, every knuckle that pounds against his cheek like an obscene caress. He knows he deserves it.

When Steve runs into the Bryer house, baseball bat in hand, he shouldn’t really be surprised that the boy he’s been a little bit in love with since he was 13 and the girl he likes are facing down a monster from another dimension.

*

Jonathan Bryer was still the strangest thing he’d ever seen, ever would see. 

Steve isn’t afraid of the upside down, the great beyond, the Place Where People Disappear. A monster with a face that opens like a flower and devours you like a shark. But he is afraid of the way Jonathan Bryer smells. Like wool and fresh paint, old newspaper and the healthy scent of earth, overturned by a storm. Sometimes at night, burrowed underneath covers that still sit too straight in a bed he’s long overgrown, he would think about it. Imagines burying his nose into Jonathan's shaggy hair, what it would feel like to to run his nose underneath the dip in his neck, reach out with his tongue to taste his messy skin. 

Afterword, when Will is returned, and the grief and Hysteria of the past week has diminished, they meet by the stream. It’s too cold and Steve isn’t wearing a proper jacket, Jonathan has on a scarf that Steve suspects is his mother’s and is fighting the remains of a head cold. They still haven't talked about how they both like Nancy. It’s perfect.

“Sorry about Will,” Steve begins. “I’m glad you got him back.”

Jonathan nods , eyebrows lost somewhere in his hair, eyes bright and sharp in the sunlight. 

“Sorry about your face.” Jonathan says softly.

“No, you’re not.” Steve grins, Jonathan smiles back. Thier hands brush as the winds rustles the trees above their heads, clouds looming in the distance being the promise of rain.

Steve wants to kiss him. 

He does. 

“

**Author's Note:**

> Steve's mom has an implied suicide attempt and appears to have a form of what some could call OCD. Steve does say that he "understands her motivation," after a fight with Jonathon.
> 
> I miiight make this into a Steve/Nancy/Jonathon thing. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
